Over 90% of girl students in Corpn schools aware of sexual abuse: Survey

CHENNAI: In the greater Chennai Corporation’s government higher secondary schools, over 90% of female pupils were aware of sexual abuse. Approximately 86% of girls were aware of physical abuse at the same time, according to a survey conducted in 2022–2023 by the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

The main objective of the study is to establish the prevalence and determinants of child sexual and physical abuse among adolescent school going girls and explore the reasons for nondisclosure of abuse.

A senior official from the School Education Department, told DT Next the survey was conducted as a cross sectional study among adolescent girls from Class IX to Class XII.

“With the written consents obtained from their parents’ data was collected from 300 students using a semi structured questionnaire and analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.

Quoting the study, the official said about 13% of the children revealed that they were subjected to some form of abuse and about 10% children had suffered from physical abuse and 5.66% had suffered sexual abuse.

According to the statistics, among physically abused, slapping was the most common type of ill-treatment which was experienced by 82.14% of children and 17.85% of the children had faced serious physical abuse in the form of being locked up in a room, being tied up and suffering burns.

Further, of the 17 children who had suffered sexual abuse, 17.64% revealed been abused more than once. Only 82% children among physically abused and 56.52% of sexually abused had disclosed about their ill-treatment that too mainly to their peer group friends. Prevalence of child abuse is statistically significant among children not residing with their parents, the data said.

“The experts concluded that a structuring proper solutions to address child abuse is the need of the hour. Also, a child friendly social system which encourages the child to reveal abuse at an earlier stage and guides to safeguard from getting victimised should be developed”, the official said.

With counselling experts here demand there should be 100% awareness on the sexual abuse among children, the study has identified that fear of consequences, a sense that disclosing is futile, being told by the abuser not to tell, fear of not being believed, shame and to protect family members were the main reasons for non-disclosure of abuse.

“The sexual and physical abuse awareness among the girl students should be 100%. Even a single girl child should not be abused in any form. The authorities should ensure that the very child, from elementary to higher secondary education should have basic knowledge of the sexual abuse”, R Gayathri, a students’ counsellor in the city said. She said the reasons for the non-disclosure of the sexual abuse is valid one and “the authorities should remove the fear of such stigmas”.